[rescue] My new UltraSparc 5's, also my first Sun stations

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Mon, 06 Jun 2005 @ 20:43 -0400, Patrick Giagnocavo said:

> On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 06:03:20PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > A lot of developers don't seem to care how well software like Gnome runs
> > on anything less than a 0-2 year old PC, and from discussions I've read
> > a lot of people no longer even think about how things will run remotely.
> > 
> > For example, if your application is dependent on things like DGA and
> > local shared memory, it won't run remotely.
> 
> DGA is inherently non-networkable, so there really is nothing you can
> do about that.  Personally I think it is/was a dumb idea to require
> it, but I am no genius X programmer so maybe it solves a real need.

It solves a real need: performance.

Since the apps that need it generally won't run or run poorly over a
network, I don't believe they consider it worthwhile to make it work
over a network.

The problem as I see it is the use of such accelerations creeping into
even application and other software.  It's OK if it is optional, but I
think we are not far away from even server systems being GUI dependent,
and requiring local displays.

Yes, I think people are that dumb.

Also, even with plain remote terminals, a lot of applications eat up
tons of X memory.  I tried to deploy some X terminals with 64MB of RAM,
and found that a lot of apps used that up rather quickly.





-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." --
Unknown]